ABSTRACT
The dynamics of development in a world of increasing interdependence with a less hegemonic international system requires a wider range of public goods. Thus the importance of regional public goods (RPGs) for guaranteeing peace and security and for providing rules and enhancing cooperation for development has increased. The public sector "producers" of these RPGs will increasingly be regional organizations, mechanisms of regional cooperation, and regional integration schemes, as well as intergovernmental institutions (Pacific Alliance) or ad hoc institutionalities (the Inter-American Development Bank initiative to support RPGs). Latin American organizations were designed to build regional and subregional economic integration starting with trade agreements. The Latin American debt crisis, the end of the "lost" decade of the 1980s, and in the context of globalization, economic integration objectives were adapted to a more open world trade system. The protection of democracy has also become a contested area between inter-American and South American organizations.
